AND YOU GHOSTS RISE BLUE FROM ALCHEMY

The light woke her, and the sensation of lying with him. She never slept for long. She breathed in the divine smell of his hair. The incense from his cathedral of hair. From his dreadlocks. She let them envelop her, wrap around her. They were a bit itchy, the ends prickled, they rolled like beads in the bed. That’s what left the marks in the morning, etched into her skin. During the day she watched these marks slowly fade, like secret wedding rings, around her arms, her shoulders, her waist.

Close to his head it was soft and fluffy. No, they weren’t braids. They were delicate coils. She looked at him, this astounding specimen, caught in the sheets of her bed. It sometimes seemed to her as if a creature with tentacles was gripping her from all sides. She didn’t dare move, for fear of waking him.

Gently, she reached for a book. ‘And you ghosts rise blue from alchemy…’ Years of school and teachers, in Clèves and then in Bordeaux, and she hadn’t read Césaire, she hadn’t read Senghor, let alone Achebe or Soyinka. She’d never even heard of the last two. He’d had to spell them out to her. She’d felt illiterate. And she didn’t know Fanon—and she was French? Nor Tchicaya U Tam’si, from the Congo? Nor Sony Labou Tansi, from the other Congo? Or even Tsitsi Dangarembga, from Zimbabwe? Or Bessie Head, from Botswana? (Where the hell was Botswana?) What she couldn’t find in French she read in English. She read lying next to him, in silence, for hours. She was looking for answers. She was looking for the book that would tell their story. That would tell her the future. She tried to read from his perspective, to become the thing that he had loved, here, right here. Was it that female character? He slept in. He went to sleep late.

She had eventually hidden the photo of her son. She had given it some thought. In the photo he was only five; he certainly didn’t make her seem old. One day, of course, she’d talk about it with him. They’d get round to it. But all that time before—the village, Bordeaux, Paris and even Los Angeles—it was as if, before him, there was nothing. As if time began with the mornings lying against him. What had she done during all those years? Before this intensity?

There were other photos, of Rose and her, and of her brother, in black and white, but—even assuming he had noticed them—he didn’t ask questions. She looked at her son in the photo, with his face from another place, from another time. The time when the bike had training wheels. Where was she? In Paris. The time, oddly enough, of that other lover, Brice. She only remembered it now—not Brice, but the fact that he was black. Brice’s colour had been of no importance at all. Was it, stupidly, because he was not very dark? Or because, like her, he was French? His West Indian accent, his family from the islands, it was—anecdotal, cosmetic. She didn’t care in the slightest. They spent their time in nightclubs blowing money from the commercials they did during those years. They danced. He was good-looking, twenty, peroxide hair very short. He was only interested in auditions. For the agencies, black was fashionable: nighttime, Thierry Mugler, Nick Cave, Tim Burton, the last echoes of the New Wave. An airy, twirling memory, like a dress. And perhaps, in his own way, he was not black. She remembered in particular that he liked boys. Girls, too, but also boys. When he left her, she was not unhappy, but she lost weight. In haste and in terror, she had investigated his background. At that time, Haitians, heroin addicts and homosexuals were the only ones rumoured to have AIDS. For her, Haiti and the West Indies were one and the same.

No AIDS. She forgot him. And she forgot that she had had at least one black lover after all. Brice was colourless, like her at the time. Their pigmentary difference was no big deal.

Kouhouesso woke up. Said hey, still in a slightly surprised tone. Rubbed his eyes with the flat of his hands. Got up to piss. She stayed there, her heart pounding. He came back. Wrapped her in his arms. Settled himself, taking his time, magnificently. They made love. Occasionally they laughed. Even then, she did not know what was going on. She only knew what was in her mind: that she was at the centre of the world, in his shoulders, his arms, his hair.

She had to keep him a bit longer. But, between the moment he opened his eyes and when he left, it was always the same scenario, the minutes flew by and then he was standing up. He put on his clothes from the day before, and left. Never showered at her place. Didn’t call her. But if she sent him a text—‘Miss you’, ‘I’m thinking about you’—he replied, just a few words—‘me too’ or ‘lots of love’.

Lots of love, that’s the way her English pen pal had signed off her letters, when they were fifteen.

Out of pride, she made herself put him to the test with her own silence. Two days, three days…ten days. She ended up capitulating and sent a text proposing a date. He was always up for it. With astounding candour, he asked why she hadn’t been in touch. And he was punctual, ever since she had rebuked him, in savage French, for being late the first time.

He had raised his voice a little: ‘Nous n’avions pas précisé une heure.’

He hardly ever responded in French. Where he came from, they spoke English and French and numerous (three hundred!) other languages. Nous n’avions pas précisé une heure : the sentence was a bit odd, but mostly it was his accent that was odd. An accent like the comedian Michel Leeb’s. For a second, she thought he was making fun of her. That he was overdoing it. In her village, in Clèves, in the eighties, there was always someone imitating Michel Leeb imitating black people. If he had said in English, just as firmly, we didn’t say what time, she might have been intimidated. But she wanted to smile now. When he said it, précisé became a warble, with a rolling ‘r’, the first syllable emphasised, and three big open vowels. As for ‘time’, it was a throaty sound, sombre and menacing. She remembered the ugly old ebony masks brought back from Senegal by her paternal grandparents, well before she was born, and laid out on a Basque tablecloth. She had never thought twice about any of it.

Afterwards she forgot. Something took over, kept taking over. She had read Heart of Darkness. Enough of it to know that his project was madness. Short of digitising the forest, renting a green-key studio and dumping the actors into the jungle? Marlow didn’t meet the Intended until the end. It was a beautiful scene—if short and cruel, the Intended waiting for Kurtz in vain—but you could get a few wonderful shots (mourning dress, her hair in an ash-blonde bun, ‘not very young’: in Hollywood terms, exactly her age). ‘Her fair hair seemed to catch all the remaining light in a glimmer of gold.’ You could even imagine inserting scenes where Kurtz dreamed about her, scenes where she appeared, diaphanous in the jungle—after all, it was a novel teeming with visions, a hallucinatory novel, miasmic, mystical. ‘I am proud to know I understand him better than anyone on earth…’ Yes, it was a role for her. Yes, Kurtz dreamed about the Intended and she, Solange, would go into the jungle. Or into the studio, but with Kouhouesso.

On Skype, Rose told her that it was a bad sign when a man never invited you to his place. What was he hiding? Another woman? Several other women? Seven women with their throats cut? Dirty socks? A mess? Solange still hadn’t mentioned the colour of Kouhouesso’s skin, or his name, but it seemed as if the telepathic waves were being transmitted through the network.

He shared his place with another tenant, Jessie. Who was never there. And who paid most of the rent. A villa that was almost as beautiful as George’s. Kouhouesso was on the top floor, with a terrace that overlooked the canyon. The first time he took her there, she couldn’t stop walking around. A huge light-filled loft, books everywhere, as well as a few accent pieces of furniture. A big bed, a large beige rug. Computers resting directly on the floor, lots of technology.

She wandered around barefoot on the wooden floor, euphoric. She wore a simple white cotton dress, with thin crocheted straps. On the wall there was a—what was it?—giant painted skin, parchment, a sort of frieze with angels and swords, a weird alphabet. And lying casually on the ground was a huge head with a serene expression, a black female torso made out of yellow material. She was so beautiful, this woman whose face was lined with stripes, that it made her feel weary, perhaps from jealousy. ‘Where did you buy it?’ She imagined him negotiating the price of this prodigious object in some village market. He had bought it in the British Museum gift shop. A copy, of course. ‘Who is it?’ He burst out laughing. Do you ask ‘who is it?’ about the Venus de Milo? It was the King of Ife. Not a woman but a king. The most famous head in African art, along with the Fang masks, perhaps. As for the scroll on the wall, it was an Ethiopian magic scroll, to conjure the devil in Amharic.

She thought he said America and took on a knowing look.

The sun was setting over the canyon; they were listening to Leonard Cohen. He opened a bottle that she’d brought, his Chinese eyes became two slits and a trace of something tender was hovering around his face, near his eyelids, near his mouth, an apparition, like a hummingbird, something swift and nebulous. Perhaps that was what held her back, what she couldn’t quite…the fleeting gentleness in a mask. She wanted to kiss him where the soft folds opened up, here, there, and him hidden beneath. ‘Terrified by love,’ Rose would say.

He was going to see Leonard Cohen in concert soon. Did she know that the famous singer’s main adversary was not the Vietnam war or the American right wing, but his own depression? He wondered what role the holocaust of the Jews (he didn’t say ‘the Shoah’) played in this lifelong depression.

As for her, she wondered when the concert was and why he didn’t invite her.

When she woke, the loft was empty. ‘Kouhouesso?’ She had only ever said his name in a hushed voice, in his arms. She had never said it to anyone else. She hadn’t even spoken to George about him. It was strange saying his name, Kouhouesso, out loud, in the silence. Like blasphemy. Sounds that she didn’t know how to say in any language, intonations into empty space, of an imaginary Africa, magic and formidable.

Jessie was there. They were both smoking by the pool. They had opened some beers and were talking about the Heart of Darkness project. Jessie (she guessed as soon as she saw the villa) was the famous Jessie, the film star, one of the rare black Hollywood superstars. Less famous than George, but still…She reached her hand out to him. Jessie shot a few salacious glances at his buddy. She smiled, modest. Intimidated, not by this guy, but by Kouhouesso’s silence. He was looking away. Was he annoyed at being seen with her? Or with a white woman? She swatted the idea like a fly. Jessie offered her some green tea: ‘All girls drink green tea.’ She went for the green tea. A Mexican housemaid appeared; she hadn’t come across her the day before. ‘I said to Kou,’ he continued, ‘never date a French girl. The last time I dated a French girl, there was a slight disagreement. Petite chérie was driving down the canyon at full speed—never argue with a woman at the wheel—I told her, slow down, you’re going to kill us. She peels off into the side road and bang! There goes my Maybach.’

He was not speaking to her or to Kouhouesso, but to the canyon, so it seemed. From what he was saying, Maybach was a make of car. She guessed it from the context, as she did with a lot of things.

‘I want to get out. She backs up. And bang, again. There goes the the back left bumper!’

Kouhouesso was laughing; he had obviously heard the story before. It was a shrill laugh, a bit impatient. She tried to catch his eye. To discern any criticism, but he had put on his mask. And they had gone back to talking about the film. Things were more advanced than she had imagined.

She got the impression that it was time for her to go, leave them—to work.